Profile: Barry Goldwater

Barry Goldwater was a participant or observer in the following events:

Gerald R. Ford, Jr. [Source: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library]President Nixon names Congressman Gerald R. Ford (R-MI) as his nominee for vice president. Two days before, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned his office after being convicted of tax evasion charges unrelated to Watergate (see October 10, 1973). [Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum, 5/3/1999] Nixon’s original choice for Agnew’s replacement is former Texas governor John Connally, in hopes that Connally can secure the 1976 GOP presidential nomination, win the election, and continue Nixon’s legacy. But Connally, Nixon’s Treasury Election, is himself under investigation for his handling of a secret Nixon campaign fund. Nixon’s close political ally and strategist Melvin Laird, Nixon’s first secretary of defense, and veteran political adviser Bryce Harlow advised Nixon to select Ford as his new vice president. Other Republicans are recommending better-known party stalwarts—former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, California governor Ronald Reagan, Senate Watergate Committee co-chair Howard Baker, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, Senator Barry Goldwater, Republican Party chairman George H.W. Bush, Connally, Laird, and others—Ford is a complete party loyalist, popular among Congressional Republicans, and an influential member of the House Judiciary Committee. By naming Ford as vice president, Laird and Barlow hope to head off any impeachment vote by that committee. On October 10, Laird phoned Ford and, according to Laird’s later recollection, said: “Jerry, you’re going to get a call from Al Haig [Nixon’s chief of staff]. I don’t want any bullsh_t from you. Don’t hesitate. Don’t talk to Betty [Ford, his wife]. Say yes.” [Werth, 2006, pp. 30-31]

Amid rumors and observations of President Nixon’s crumbling physical and emotional state (see Mid-October, 1973), Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) writes in a memo to himself: “I have reason to suspect that all might not be well mentally in the White House. This is the only copy that will ever be made of this; it will be locked in my safe.” The memo will not be revealed until 2001, when it is reported in Richard Reeves’s biography, President Nixon.[Reeves, 2001, pp. 606]

Barry Goldwater. [Source: Blogger (.com)]Three senior Republican congressmen—Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), Hugh Scott (R-PA), and John Rhodes (R-AZ)—meet with President Nixon, and tell him that his chances of avoiding impeachment are “gloomy.” Pressure is mounting both in the press and among the citizenry for Nixon to resign. [Dean, 2006, pp. xxxi; Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum, 7/3/2007]

Nelson Rockefeller. [Source: National Archives]The choice of a vice president for Gerald Ford quickly narrows to two: former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and Republican National Committee chairman George H.W. Bush. Ford’s political adviser Melvin Laird believes Rockefeller is the only Republican who can deliver enough political punch to help Ford win the 1976 presidential election. Others tried to tout outgoing California governor Ronald Reagan as a viable vice presidential choice, but few of Ford’s staff and advisers believe that Reagan is a good choice for the slot. Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) refuses consideration, saying that he is too old, but when asked who he would recommend, names Bush. Bush and his supporters mount a strong internal campaign for the job. One such supporter, Nebraska Republican operative Richard Herman, says that Bush’s best qualification is that he is “the only one with no opposition. He may not be the first choice in all cases, but he’s no lower than second with anyone.” Rockefeller is much more ambivalent about his possible selection; he has presidential ambitions of his own, but at age 66 knows that if he ever intends to run for the White House, his time is at hand. Spending four years as Ford’s vice president does not appeal to Rockefeller. And GOP conservatives, spearheaded by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) loathe and vilify Rockefeller at every opportunity. [Werth, 2006, pp. 61-63] However, Ford’s chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, is working behind the scenes to promote Rockefeller’s nomination over Bush’s with the RNC. Rumsfeld has no more use for Rockefeller than do the Helms supporters, but he feels he will have a better shot at the 1980 presidential nomination with Rockefeller as vice president than he will with Bush. [Unger, 2007, pp. 52]

After attending church, President Ford works on the final wording of his statement announcing the pardon of Richard Nixon. His statement will emphasize Nixon’s failing health and decades of service to the Republican Party and America. Ford alerts a few Congressional leaders of his upcoming announcement. Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) is nonplussed. “What are you pardoning him of?” he asks, “It doesn’t make any sense.” Ford replies, “The public has the right to know that in the eyes of the president, Nixon is clear.” Goldwater is taken aback. “He may be clear in your eyes, but he’s not clear in mine,” Goldwater retorts. House Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-MA) is equally blunt. “I’m telling you right now,” O’Neill says: “this will cost you the election. I hope it’s not part of any deal.” Ford responds, “No, there’s no deal,” to which O’Neill says, “Then why the hell are you doing it?” O’Neill says that if Ford has to pardon Nixon, the timing is bad. He needs to wait. Ford disagrees. The resistance from without is reflected inside the White House, when press secretary Jerald terHorst tenders his resignation to Ford (see September 7, 1974). TerHorst’s letter says in part, “I cannot in good conscience support your decision to pardon” Nixon, “even before he has been charged with the commission of any crime. As your spokesperson, I do not know how I could credibly defend that action in the absence of a like decision to grant absolute pardon to the young men who evaded military service (see August 31, 1974) as a matter of conscience and the absence of pardon for former aides of Mr. Nixon who have been charged with crimes—and imprisoned.… [I]t is impossible to conclude that the former president is more deserving of mercy than persons of lesser station in life whose offenses have had far less effect on our national well-being.” [Werth, 2006, pp. 316-319]

The middle of the 1970s sees a fundamental paradigm shift among American conservatives and some formerly liberal intellectuals. 'Hawks' Disenchanted with Detente - Republican and Democratic “hawks,” defined by author J. Peter Scoblic as relatively conservative “establishment policy makers who played a higher premium on confrontation and the use of military force than did their more ‘dovish’ colleagues,” become more and more disenchanted with the US’s relations with the Soviet Union. They don’t believe that the program of detente—a gradual thawing of relations that foresees the end of the Cold War—has provided the US with any real benefits, but has allowed the USSR to build an enormous military and nuclear stockpile, more than enough to coerce the US into following its wishes. This reflects the mindset of former presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), who had fought negotiations with the USSR since the Eisenhower administration. Anti-Communist 'Neoconservatives' - On the other side of the debate, a group of formerly liberal intellectuals unhappy with the Democratic Party’s pacifist post-Vietnam foreign policy positions find themselves bringing their militantly anti-Communist views across the aisle to join forces with their former conservative opponents. This group will eventually dub themselves “neoconservatives” (see Late 1930s - 1950s). Joining Forces - Scoblic will write: “Like sheets of ice calving away from a glacier, the hawks and the neoconservatives fell away into the sea of conservative discontent that had been lapping at Washington’s centrist foreign policy establishment for decades. These converts shared the conservative belief that, in the Soviet Union, the United States faced an ideological enemy with messianic goals. The neoconservatives, particularly, subscribed to the simplistic good-versus-evil, us-versus-them schema that animated the Right. They believed that there were clear sides in the Cold War and worried that Democrats had forgotten this defining principle. The hawks were less moralistic but no less explicit in their assessment of the Soviet threat. They agreed that MAD [the theory of nuclear “mutual assured destruction” that says neither side will risk nuclear war because of the likelihood that both sides will be destroyed] was a choice, that nuclear war fighting was a better strategy, and that negotiation was of little value—and in doing so they effectively accepted the Manichaean worldview that had led conservatives to the same conclusion. 'Systematic Failures' of US Intelligence Community - The neoconservatives in particular bring the view that the US intelligence community has, through incompetence or perhaps outright collusion with the Soviets, systematically underestimated the Soviet threat for years, and their own assessments—based on instinct and political convictions rather than ascertainable data—are inherently more accurate than those of the CIA or the NSA. “In essence,” Scoblic will write, “they argued that the nature of the Cold War was something to be morally intuited, not empirically observed.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 75-76]

President Ford fires a number of Nixon holdovers and replaces them with “my guys… my own team,” both to show his independence and to prepare for a bruising 1976 primary battle with Ronald Reagan. The wholesale firings and reshufflings are dubbed the “Halloween Massacre.” Donald Rumsfeld becomes secretary of defense, replacing James Schlesinger (see November 4, 1975). George H. W. Bush replaces William Colby as director of the CIA. Henry Kissinger remains secretary of state, but his position as national security adviser is given to Brent Scowcroft. Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld’s deputy chief of staff, moves up to become the youngest chief of staff in White House history. Perhaps the most controversial decision is to replace Nelson Rockefeller as Ford’s vice-presidential candidate for the 1976 elections. Ford’s shake-up is widely viewed as his cave-in to Republican Party hardliners. He flounders in his defense of his new staffers: for example, when Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) asks him why he thinks Rumsfeld is qualified to run the Pentagon, Ford replies, “He was a pilot in the Korean War.” The ultimate winner in the shake-up is Rumsfeld, who instigated the moves from behind the scenes and gains the most from them. Rumsfeld quickly wins a reputation in Washington as a political opportunist, gunning for the vice presidency in 1976 and willing to do whatever is necessary to get it. Rockefeller tells Ford: “Rumsfeld wants to be president of the United States. He has given George Bush the deep six by putting him in the CIA, he has gotten me out.… He was third on your [vice-presidential] list (see August 16-17, 1974) and now he has gotten rid of two of us.… You are not going to be able to put him on the [ticket] because he is defense secretary, but he is not going to want anybody who can possibly be elected with you on that ticket.… I have to say I have a serious question about his loyalty to you.” Later, Ford will write of his sharp regret in pushing Rockefeller off the ticket: “I was angry at myself for showing cowardice in not saying to the ultraconservatives: It’s going to be Ford and Rockefeller, whatever the consequences.” [Werth, 2006, pp. 340-341] “It was the biggest political mistake of my life,” Ford later says. “And it was one of the few cowardly things I did in my life.” [US Senate, 7/7/2007]

Paul Warnke, at a 1986 press conference. [Source: Terry Ashe/Time and Life Pictures / Getty Images]President Carter’s nomination of Paul Warnke to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) galvanizes opposition from conservatives throughout Washington. Long Record of Opposing Arms Buildup - Warnke, a trial lawyer who began his political career as general counsel to the secretary of defense under President Johnson and established himself as an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, has a long record of favoring negotiations with the Soviet Union over confrontation. His 1975 article in Foreign Affairs magazine, “Apes on a Treadmill,” ridiculed the conservative idea that the only way to counter the Soviet nuclear threat is to build ever more nuclear weapons, and earned the lasting enmity of those same conservatives. “We can be first off the treadmill,” he wrote. “That’s the only victory the arms race has to offer.” Carter also wants Warnke to head the administration’s negotiating team in the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) with the Soviets. [New York Times, 11/1/2001; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 101]Conservative, Neoconservative Counterattack Creates Grassroots Element - The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD—see 1976) leads the opposition to Warnke’s nomination. Even before Warnke is officially nominated, neoconservatives Penn Kemble and Joshua Muravchik write and circulate an anonymous memo around Washington accusing Warnke of favoring “unilateral abandonment by the US of every weapons system which is subject to negotiation at SALT.” The memo also cites the conclusions of the Team B analysts (see November 1976) to deride Warnke’s arguments against nuclear superiority. Shortly after the memo, one of the CPD’s associate groups, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM) creates a “grassroots” organization, the Emergency Coalition Against Unilateral Disarmament (ECAUD), that actually functions out of the CDM offices in Washington. ECAUD, though an offshoot of the CDM, has a leadership made up of conservatives, including the American Conservative Union’s James Roberts, the Republican National Committee’s Charles Black, and the Conservative Caucus’s Howard Phillips. The directors of Young Americans for Freedom, the Young Republican National Federation, and the American Security Council (see 1978) are on the steering committee. And the executive director is Morton Blackwell, a hard-right conservative who works with direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie. In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write, “Thus were the views of neoconservatives, hawks, and traditional conservatives given a populist base.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 101-102]Contentious Confirmation Hearings - Scoblic describes the opposition to Warnke at his Senate confirmation hearings as “vicious.” Eminent Cold War foreign policy expert Paul Nitze (see January 1976) lambasts Warnke, calling his ideas “demonstrably unsound… absolutely asinine… screwball, arbitrary, and fictitious.” Neoconservative Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) gives over his first Senate speech to blasting Warnke; Moynihan’s Senate colleague, neoconservative leader Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s) joins Moynihan in criticizing Warnke’s nomination, as does Barry Goldwater (R-AZ). Another conservative congressman accuses Warnke, falsely, of working with both Communists and terrorists: according to the congressman, Warnke is in collusion with “the World Peace Council, a Moscow-directed movement which advocates the disarmament of the West as well as support for terrorist groups.” Heritage Foundation chief Paul Weyrich uses Viguerie’s mass-mailing machine to send 600,000 letters to voters urging them to tell their senators to vote “no” on Warnke. [New York Times, 11/1/2001; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 103-104]Warnke Confirmed, but Resistance Established - Warnke is confirmed by a 70-29 vote for the ACDA, and by a much slimmer 58-40 vote to head the US SALT II negotiating team. The New York Times’s Anthony Lewis later writes of “a peculiar, almost venomous intensity in some of the opposition to Paul Warnke; it is as if the opponents have made him a symbol of something they dislike so much that they want to destroy him.… [I]t signals a policy disagreement so fundamental that any imaginable arms limitation agreement with the Soviet Union will face powerful resistance. And it signals the rise of a new militant coalition on national security issues.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 104]Effective Negotiator - Warnke will resign his position in October 1978. Though he will constantly be under fire from Congressional conservatives, and will frequently battle with administration hawks such as National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, he will earn the respect of both American and Soviet negotiators. In 1979, disarmament scholar Duncan Clarke will write that the Soviets come to regard Warnke as one of the toughest of American negotiators, with one Soviet official saying: “We always wondered why Americans would pay so much for good trial attorneys. Now we know.” Warnke will have a strong influence on the eventual shape of the final SALT II agreement (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979). [New York Times, 11/1/2001; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 104] Upon his death in 2001, fellow negotiator Ralph Earle will say, “Arms control will be forever on the agenda due in large part to Paul and his articulation of the importance of the issues.” [Arms Control Today, 1/1/2002]

The Supreme Court refuses to hear a case brought against President Jimmy Carter by Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and several other conservative lawmakers. In Goldwater v. Carter, the senators argue that Carter exceeded his authority in unilaterally withdrawing the United States from a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. Carter took the unusual step in order to recognize the Communist government in mainland China as the US-recognized representative government of China. Goldwater and his fellows argued that Congress, not the president, has the power to withdraw the US from a treaty with another nation. The Court, in an 8-1 decision with liberal Justice William Brennan dissenting, rules that the case is not appropriate for the judiciary, but should be resolved via negotiation and legislation between the legislative and executive branches. Conservative Justice William Rehnquist writes the majority opinion. Congress, controlled by Carter’s Democratic Party, does not address the question of how to properly withdraw the nation from a treaty, and Carter’s action stands. [Savage, 2007, pp. 141-142; Oyez (.org), 6/2007]

Strategic Defense Initiative logo. [Source: United States Missile Defense Agency]President Reagan announces his proposal for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, later nicknamed “Star Wars”), originally conceived two years earlier (see 1981). SDI is envisioned as a wide-ranging missile defense system that, if it works, will protect the United States from nuclear attacks from the Soviet Union or other countries with ballistic missiles, essentially rendering nuclear weapons, in Reagan’s words, “impotent and obsolete.” Reagan says, “I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.” Soviet leader Yuri Andropov’s response is unprececented in its anger (see March 27, 1983); Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrinyn says SDI will “open a new phase in the arms race.” [PBS, 2000; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 129]US Hardliners 'Ecstatic' - Hardliners in and out of the Reagan administration are, in author J. Peter Scoblic’s characterization, “ecstatic, seeing SDI as the ultimate refutation of [the principle of] mutual assured destruction and therefore of the status quo, which left [the US] unable to seek victory over the Soviet Union.” The day after the speech, Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) sends Reagan a one-sentence letter: “That was the best statement I have heard from any president.” 'Less Suicidal' Adjunct to First Strike - Scoblic will write that if SDI is implemented as envisioned, “[a]lthough the Soviets would still be able to inflict enough damage that a first strike by the United States would be suicidal, it would be ‘less suicidal’ to the extent that such a concept made sense, which some Reagan officials believed it did. In short, SDI was a better adjunct to a first strike than it was a standalone defense. That made it critically destabilizing, which is why missile defense had been outlawed by [earlier treaties] in the first place.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 129-130]

Official logo of US Central Command (CENTCOM), one of the nine military commands established under the Defense Reorganization Act. [Source: Public domain]President Reagan signs into law the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, originally sponsored by Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and Representative Bill Nichols (D-AL). Goldwater-Nichols, as it is sometimes called, sparks the largest reorganization of the US military since the National Security Act of 1947. Operational authority is centralized through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as opposed to the actual service chiefs themselves. The chairman is designated as the primary military adviser to the president, the National Security Council (NSC), and the secretary of defense. The legislation also reorganizes the military command structure into several “commands”: By geographical region (Northern Command, or NORTHCOM; Central Command, or CENTCOM; European Command, or EUCOM; Pacific Command, or PACOM; and Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM); and By function (Joint Forces Command, or JFCOM; Special Operations Command, or SOCOM; Strategic Command, or STRATCOM; and Transportation Command, or TRANSCOM). [Statement on Signing the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, 10/1/1986 ; Lederman, 1999; Wilson, 2004, pp. 212; US Air Force Air University, 11/21/2007; National Defense University Library, 2/10/2008]

Reporter Lee Fang of the liberal Center for American Progress writes an op-ed for the Boston Globe comparing the current political attacks against Democratic efforts to reform health care being coordinated by the Koch brothers (see 1977-Present, 1979-1980, 1981-2010, 1984 and After, May 6, 2006, April 15, 2009, May 29, 2009, and November 2009) with the efforts of their father, Fred Koch (see 1940 and After), to label former President John F. Kennedy a traitor and a Communist tool. David Koch recently helped coordinate, from behind the scenes, a protest that compared health care reform to the Holocaust, and other protests that have turned violent. More systematically, he and his reclusive brother Charles have funded such conservative organizations as Americans for Prosperity (AFP—see Late 2004) and other front groups, none of which bear the Koch name. Fang writes: “Americans for Prosperity’s tactics are not new. Just as Koch inherited his oil business from his father, Americans for Prosperity borrows from the ultra-right group also founded in part by his dad, the John Birch Society” (see 1945 and After, March 10, 1961, 1963, August 4, 2008, and April 26, 2010). Fred Koch helped conceive the far-right, anti-Communist John Birch Society (JBS), which, Fang writes, “cloaked its pro-business, anti-civil rights agenda in the rhetoric of the Cold War.” The JBS labeled Kennedy a Communist-inspired traitor and advocated his impeachment (see November 1963), stood against taxation as another aspect of “creeping Communism” inside the federal government, and claimed that the civil rights movement was being directed by the Soviet Union (see April 13, 2009 and December 11, 2009). The JBS helped promote the 1964 presidential candidacy of Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and helped Republicans win key Congressional seats in 1966. AFP and the JBS are alike, Fang notes, in that they rarely acknowledge their funding from wealthy corporate magnates. Both portray themselves as grassroots organizations that are dedicated to promoting freedom. For a time, the JBS succeeded in aligning the interests of the very rich with the idea of anti-Communist patriotism. Similarly, AFP promotes the interests of the extremely wealthy, including the Koch brothers, as synonymous with patriotic opposition to health care reform, financial regulation, net neutrality, and the estate tax. All are labeled as “socialist,” a favorite JBS epithet. Fang concludes that “[w]ith his millions,” David Koch will have “contributed greatly to the obstruction of universal health care, the denial of climate change, and the derailment of much of President Obama’s domestic agenda. His dad would be pleased.” [Boston Globe, 12/6/2009]

John Birch Society logo. [Source: John Birch Society]John F. McManus, the head of the far-right, anti-Communist John Birch Society (JBS), releases a booklet through the organization entitled “Reality vs. Myth” that attempts to, in the words of the JBS, “set the record straight” about what the organization is and is not. According to McManus, the JBS has never held anti-Semitic or racist views, or tolerated such within its organization. All such assertions come from “enemies” of the organization, often from persons or organizations with Communist affiliations (see March 10, 1961 and 1963), he writes. [John Birch Society, 2011]History of Anti-Communism - The organization was founded in 1958 by candy magnate Robert Welch, a former Massachusetts Republican Party official who began railing about what he considered the “pervasive” influence of Communism in all aspects of American society, particularly in the federal government. Liberals are inherently opposed to freedom and democracy, Welch argued, because liberals are in favor of collectivism/socialism, and therefore are witting or unwitting traitors to the individualist tenets that underlie the US Constitution. The JBS became a vocal opponent of the United Nations, alleging as early as 1959 that the UN intended to establish a “New World Order” (NWO) or “one-world government” (see September 11, 1990). The JBS has also portrayed itself as a fundamentally Christian organization, and views Communism and other non-American forms of government as inherently “godless.” Since the end of World War II, the organization has asserted, the US government has been actively attempting to implement “godless Communism” in place of a Constitutional democracy, including a 1958 claim by Welch that then-President Eisenhower was “a dedicated conscious agent of the communist conspiracy.” Some “Bircher” officials have touted the NWO as being rooted in the alleged Illuminati Freemason conspiracy. In 1964, the JBS enthusiastically supported the presidential candidacy of Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), though a large number of members supported Eisenhower’s vice-president, Richard Nixon (R-CA) over Goldwater. The organization opposed John F. Kennedy (D-MA), accusing him of being a traitor and a Communist dupe (see November 1963), accusations it had also leveled against Eisenhower. After Goldwater’s defeat, Welch attempted to land the segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace (D-AL), as a standardbearer for the JBS. [Political Research Associates, 2010] McManus insists that the JBS’s overarching loyalty is to the Christian Bible, the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. ” Our organization was created to uphold the truths in the Declaration and the limitations upon government in the Constitution,” he writes. “Not alone in such an endeavor, we welcome all who treasure what our nation’s Founders produced.” [John Birch Society, 2011]Less Overt Racist, Anti-Semitic Stances - During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the JBS painted the civil rights movement as a Communist conspiracy, accusing “ignorant” and “uneducated” African-Americans of either being witting or unwitting dupes of a Communist conspiracy against America. It launched a powerful and well-organized assault on the civil rights movement, calling it a “fraud” and labeling it the “Negro Revolutionary Movement.” Some JBS publications and officials also asserted that the nation’s financial system was controlled largely by Jews with little if any loyalty to the US, and in some instances actively working to undermine and destabilize America’s economy. Such assertions led many to characterize the JBS as a racist and anti-Semitic organization, characterizations that the organization has always disputed. It has touted its very small number of African-American and Jewish members as proof of its claims not to be institutionally racist or anti-Semitic. In 2010, the liberal Political Research Associates (PRA) wrote: “The JBS… discouraged overt displays of racism, while it promoted policies that had the effect of racist oppression by its opposition to the Civil Rights movement. The degree of political racism expressed by the JBS was not ‘extremist’ but similar to that of many mainstream Republican and Democratic elected officials at the time. This level of mainstream racism should not be dismissed lightly, as it was often crude and sometimes violent, treating Black people in particular as second-class citizens, most of whom had limited intelligence and little ambition. In [one JBS publication], Martin Luther King, Jr. is portrayed as an agent of a massive communist conspiracy to agitate among otherwise happy Negroes to foment revolution, or at least promote demands for more collectivist federal government intrusion.” PRA also went on to note that one of its founders, Revilo P. Oliver, was forced to resign from the JBS after making anti-Semitic and racist comments at a 1996 JBS rally. And, the PRA wrote, “When crude antisemitism was detected in JBS members, their membership was revoked[,]” though the organization still held that anti-American Jews were attempting to do damage to the nation’s economy. “At its core, however, the Birch view of the conspiracy does not reveal it to be controlled or significantly influenced by Jews in general, or a secret group of conniving Jews, nor is their evidence of a hidden agenda within the Society to promote suspicion of Jews. The Society always struggled against what it saw as objectionable forms of prejudice against Jews, but it can still be criticized for having continuously promoted mild antisemitic stereotyping. Nevertheless, the JBS was closer to mainstream stereotyping and bigotry than the naked race hate and genocidal antisemitism of neonazi or KKK groups. In a sense, the Birch society pioneered the encoding of implicit cultural forms of ethnocentric White racism and Christian nationalist antisemitism rather than relying on the White supremacist biological determinism and open loathing of Jews that had typified the old right prior to WWII. Throughout its existence, however, the Society has promoted open homophobia and sexism. The Society’s anti-communism and states rights libertarianism was based on sincere principles, but it clearly served as a cover for organizing by segregationists and White supremacists. How much of this was conscious, and how much unconscious, is difficult to determine.” [Political Research Associates, 2010] McManus calls attempts to point out the JBS’s history of implicit racism and anti-Semitism as deliberate, dishonest attempts to “stigmatize” the group, usually by persons and organizations who are working to implement a one-world government and see the JBS as a roadblock to that goal. “There was no evidence that the Society was racist, neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, or subversive of good order,” McManus claims. “But that didn’t stop many from making such charges.… There were some attempts to defend JBS against the flood of vicious characterizations but these were overwhelmed by widespread and undeserved nastiness. No private organization in our nation’s history had ever been treated so unfairly.” He calls efforts to show the JBS as racist “vicious” and false. “If truth were told,” he writes, “the John Birch Society should be congratulated nationally for its important work in diffusing racial animosities.” [John Birch Society, 2011] Many prominent white supremacist leaders used their membership in the JBS to help promote their more overtly racist organizations (see 1970-1974 and 1973). Former Ku Klux Klan leader Johnny Lee Clary has said the JBS “is just a political version of the KKK, without the name of the KKK. They center on the political ideas of the Klan and are not as vocal in public on the ideas of the racial superiority, but they attract the same people and say the same things behind closed doors.… They are racist, and full of hate and are officially listed as a hate group with several civil rights organizations throughout the USA” (see April 13, 2009). Among other non-white leaders, the JBS has labeled South Africa’s Nelson Mandela as a “Communist tyrant” (see December 11, 2009). Reframing Itself - In the late 1970s, the JBS saw its influence waning as more modern organizations comprising what some have called the “New Right” came to the fore. In the 1980s, the JBS lost even more influence after attacking Reagan administration policies. It managed to revive itself by toning down its anti-Communist rhetoric and emphasizing its warnings about the New World Order and positioning itself as a long-time advocate of right-wing, muscularly patriotic popularism. Author and journalist Andrew Reinbach notes that the JBS provided an ideological “seed bank” for many of the tenets currently embraced by the various “tea party” organizations on the right (see February 4-8, 2010 and February 15, 2010), an assertion echoed by conservative journalist Matthew Boyle. [Huffington Post, 9/12/2011; Daily Caller, 11/29/2011] McManus credits the JBS with helping bring about the impeachment of then-President Clinton, stopping the establishment of a free-trade entity in the Western Hemisphere, and putting an end to what it calls “the drive to a sovereignty-compromising North American Union.” McManus says JBS efforts to “educate” the world about the UN has prevented that organization “from becoming the tyrannical world government intended by its founders.” He writes that the JBS successfully thwarted the federal government’s alleged plans to federalize all American law enforcement, and credits the JBS’s black membership with preventing wholesale rioting and insurrection during the Civil Rights Era. He touts the JBS as being one of the primary organizations that blocked the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. And he credits the JBS with being among the first organizations to warn about what it calls the dangers of illegal immigration. He touts the support of, among others, presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX—see 1978-1996 and July 22, 2007) and conservative commentator Pat Buchanan (see June 12, 2009, June 20, 2009, July 16, 2009, and October 18, 2011 and After) as validating the organization’s ideology and positions, and notes that in recent years, the JBS was an official sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference (see April 19, 2010 and February 9-11, 2012). And he claims that attempts to paint tea party organizations as far-right, racist, or homophobic are similar to the efforts by Communists and NWO conspiratists to destroy the Society. He concludes by writing to prospective members: “Don’t allow yourself to be influenced by the false image created by the Society’s enemies. Our country is under attack and The John Birch Society offers a workable plan to combat it.” [John Birch Society, 2011]

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